THE DEAD CRY JUSTICE

A stolen sandwich plunges a society woman–turned-detective into a dangerous case.

Prudence MacKenzie and Blossom the dog are enjoying a spring day in Washington Square Park, pondering whether Prudence should go to a law school just opened to women, when a desperate urchin steals her sandwich. The pair track him to a filthy cellar, where they find him with a wounded, unconscious girl whom Prudence and her cabman friend, Danny Dennis, take to a clinic run by Quakers. Not only has the victim been beaten and violated, but someone has removed her lashes and eyebrows and tattooed her to look like a doll. The urchin, her brother, stays by her side, but soon they both vanish back into the mean streets. Prudence’s partner, a former Pinkerton agent, is recovering from bullet wounds but pitches in to help in an investigation which soon uncovers moral horrors in the highest reaches of society. Someone has been kidnapping young women, some of them quite wealthy, and turning them into prostitutes for a circle of men as influential as they are depraved. A well-off man who turned detective to search for his missing sister joins their efforts, and slowly they piece together a horrifying story. Never one to shy from danger, Prudence visits places from a brothel to an unusually creepy doll shop in her search for the missing boy and his sister, putting herself at risk of a fate worse than death.

A reminder that detection’s golden age was golden only for the well-to-do, and not always for them.